The Resurrection of Luis Suárez | OneFootball

The 39-year-old may be well past his prime, but Luis Suárez’s 2026 MLS season has turned back the clock, so much so that there is a chance he could be wearing Uruguay’s Sky Blue again soon.

“Luis Suárez is old.” That has been the talk of the town since 2022, when “Lucho” left Atlético Madrid after scoring 13 goals in 45 games that season. A pit stop at Nacional in his native Uruguay was seen as one last hurrah for the greatest Uruguayan footballer of all time before what was expected to be his final World Cup.

A disappointing World Cup in Qatar was followed by a move to Grêmio in Brazil, where Suárez saw a return to form, scoring 29 goals in 54 matches and winning two domestic cups before moving to MLS and Inter Miami, who were stockpiling aging stars in the hopes that Lionel Messi’s friends could lead the club to MLS Cup glory.

Suárez was a focal point of that journey, and it paid off. Despite knee issues and stop-and-go performances, Suárez has won two titles with Inter Miami and is now the club’s second all-time leading scorer with 52 goals, behind only Messi.

A Comeback 2026

With everything going on in the world of football, you’d be forgiven if you forgot that Suárez is currently in his third season with Inter Miami and MLS. The Uruguayan legend has 40 goals and 21 assists in 72 MLS regular-season games, a remarkable showing for a player who has been both provider and scorer at a stage of his career when he has inevitably lost a few steps.

Despite a sophomore slump in 2025, the season in which Inter Miami won the MLS Cup, Suárez did not count himself out and has risen to the occasion in 2026. After starting the season as a substitute under what was then Javier Mascherano’s setup, the striker eventually began sharing scoring duties with new arrival Germán Berterame. The two have gone on a tear since Guillermo Hoyos began playing them together rather than alternating between one or the other.

Suárez has thrived in this role, already matching his output from 2025 with 10 goals in less than half of the minutes he played last year. It wouldn’t be a stretch to predict a final mark close to 20, which was as many as he scored in his triumphant debut season in Miami.

2026 has also seen Suarez serve as Inter Miami captain, and his first hat trick with the club.

Suárez’s performances in the first half of the MLS season were so impressive that, before Uruguay’s 2026 World Cup squad was announced, there was significant pressure from sectors of the Uruguayan media for then-manager Marcelo Bielsa to recall Suárez to the national team amid a prolonged scoring slump of his team well in the range of two years.

Bielsa did not take Suárez to the World Cup, and Uruguay eventually had a dismal 2026 campaign. At the heart of it all were questions of what might have been had Suárez been there.

Still, that setback, despite having “retired” from the national team and later stating before the World Cup that “you never say no” to a potential call-up, has fueled Suárez in a way where his form, despite his age, can no longer be ignored.

One Last Dance with Uruguay?

Photo by Ernesto Ryan/Getty Images

While his MLS level has been nothing short of exceptional, albeit with its bumps along the way, Suárez is still one of the premier strikers in the world given his ability to score. And recently, his national team career was given a lifeline.

With Bielsa gone from the Uruguayan national team, an old friend in Diego Forlán could be the final element needed for Suárez to have one last dance with La Celeste. Forlán, who will serve as the full-time U-20 manager and interim head coach of the senior national team until the federation elections in 2027, suggested as much during his introductory press conference. When asked about Suárez, his former teammate in two World Cups simply responded: “Why not?”

Despite Suárez being at the center of what many considered the derailment of Bielsa’s project in Uruguay following the 2024 Copa América, the striker did not hold back when discussing issues surrounding the Argentine manager.

In a strange interview, with Suárez appearing in Inter Miami warmups and sporting bleached-blond hair, his public condemnation of Bielsa exposed deep-seated fractures within the Uruguayan national team, transforming a legendary striker’s retirement into a catalyst for intense scrutiny of the coach’s rigid management style.

Suárez’s revelations of a cold, heavily restricted training camp shattered the squad’s traditional camaraderie, sparking intense debate among fans and media over Bielsa’s uncompromising and detached methods.

The unprecedented friction not only forced current players to carefully navigate questions from the media but also increased pressure on the Uruguayan Football Association to address what had become a toxic locker room culture.

To this day, there remains a significant split among the players over whether Suárez should have made those issues public. It was an especially strange turn of events because Bielsa had not only led Uruguay to wins over Argentina and Brazil during qualifying, but Uruguay also finished third at the Copa América after defeating Brazil and eliminating the United States, the host nation.

Still, the backlash created a divide between those on Bielsa’s side and those on Suárez’s. In the end, nobody won. Suárez did not return to the national team, and Bielsa’s reign over Uruguay ended with a whimper.

Photo by Dominic Barnardt/Getty Images

Now, the carpet has been laid for Suárez to have one last shot, whether at the 2028 Copa América, when he would be 41, or simply by helping his friend Forlán get his project off to a strong start, given that Uruguay has truly failed to find adequate replacements for Suárez and Edinson Cavani.

Suárez is not without his baggage. He is a player who has often used adversity as fuel, and that drive has led to multiple incidents throughout his career. But despite his bad knees and his best years being behind him, Suárez continues to be an essential player for one of the best teams in MLS, and perhaps he still has one last run in him with La Celeste.

One thing is certain: many have been counting Luis Suárez out for some time now. But there he is, doing what he knows best — scoring goals and breaking down assumptions.

He continues to say, in his own way, that there is still a little more Lucho left.